Message from Dean Arterian

Why study law? Each law student undertakes an exciting and rigorous journey. This journey expands analytical skills, knowledge in a professional discipline that informs all aspects of society-locally, nationally and globally. Law graduates are distinctly capable of engaging the issues most critical to any community. More than ever in our history, every area of endeavor has some legal overlay-the law informs every issue. The law and the policies it drives interconnect with the environment, technology, media, foreign policy, architecture, the family, human rights and medicine. In fact, the list is as long as your imagination takes you. These limitless connections make a legal education so compelling and so important. The agenda you create, the path you take, the intellectual interests you bring with you and the ones you generate through out your life, will be profoundly enhanced by an outstanding legal education. It would be difficult to find something the law doesn't influence. Legal education prepares you for meeting the challenge of an increasingly complex world. A law degree has value whether you choose to practice law or to join the foreign service; whether you start your own company or serve as counsel to a college or university; whether you work in the technology industry or in a hospital; whether you write a novel or edit a newspaper; serve as a public defender or work in the justice department. You name the career and law applies.

Syracuse University College of Law provides every opportunity you need to create your future. This website will give you a preview of what you can anticipate as a law student here. Read about our outstanding faculty, our wonderful facility and law library, the wide range of courses and the excellent programs, clinics and joint degree opportunities designed to provide you with the skills you need to make full use of your education. We start with a firm grounding in courses you need to build on, and then you choose your direction, with the advice and assistance of faculty and staff who really care. All of this on the campus of a great University with all it has to offer, at a law school with a long history and an eye on the future.

No introduction can give you more than a taste of our community and what we have to offer. I hope you will think seriously about pursuing your legal education here at Syracuse. I encourage you to contact us with questions and to keep an eye on our website because new things happen all the time and I hope they will interest you.

Hannah R. Arterian
Dean and Professor of Law